indie games

Playdate is officially getting a Season Two with ‘about a dozen games’ next year
04 Nov

Playdate is officially getting a Season Two with ‘about a dozen games’ next year

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Panic slipped some major news into its fall Playdate Update: Season Two is happening, and we’ll see it next year. Can I get a “hell yeah!”? It’s been over two years since Season One dropped, and in the time since, it’s remained unclear whether another would ever follow. But in today’s livestream, Panic’s Video & Podcast host Christa Mrgan confirmed that Season Two is a go, and it’s “happening next year.” Consolation for killing the Stereo Dock, perhaps?There are a lot of details we still don’t know about Season Two, like how much it'll cost (Season One was included with…
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Spilled Mushrooms is my new Playdate card game addiction
20 Oct

Spilled Mushrooms is my new Playdate card game addiction

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Playing Spilled Mushrooms has been a humbling experience. There I was, thinking I’m good at both puzzles and card games, when I found myself briefly stumped on my very first “delivery” in this card puzzle game about gathering mushrooms. That’s what I get for underestimating a game with cute animals in the cover art.In Spilled Mushrooms, a Playdate game, you are a mushroom delivery-person who has messed up bigtime: you’ve spilled the mushrooms (obviously), and somehow done so in such an extreme way that they’ve ended up scattered across multiple habitats. Oops! You have a week to collect them all…
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Off-Planet Dreams is a delightfully tricky Playdate platformer with invisible puzzles
07 Oct

Off-Planet Dreams is a delightfully tricky Playdate platformer with invisible puzzles

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Off-Planet Dreams gives you everything you need to succeed, if you really want that. Help is just a few button-presses away at (almost) all times. Because of that, it feels uniquely accessible for what it is — an “invisible puzzle platformer” designed to trip you up over and over again until you’ve learned enough from your mistakes to move forward. Depending on how you approach it, Off-Planet Dreams is either a trial-and-error nightmare loop or a relatively easygoing platform adventure. Or something between the two. I died 274 times in my first playthrough, if that’s any indication of how challenging…
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Indie classic To the Moon comes to Xbox Series X/S and PS5 October 8
22 Sep

Indie classic To the Moon comes to Xbox Series X/S and PS5 October 8

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The emotional 2011 indie game To the Moon will soon be playable on Xbox Series X/S and PS5. Developer Freebird Games and publisher Serenity Forge announced this week that ports for the consoles will arrive on October 8 for $10. At the same time, they released a new installment in the series — a short called Just a To the Moon Series Beach Episode that offers one of the series’ endings. It’s available now on .To the Moon is a time travel adventure that follows two doctors who have developed a way to help dying patients fulfill their greatest dreams…
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Hollowbody fills the void left by PS2 survival horror games
13 Sep

Hollowbody fills the void left by PS2 survival horror games

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In Hollowbody, an early 2000s-style third-person survival horror game by Nathan Hamley (the solo developer behind Headware Games), the true terror comes not from its hideous monsters, but from inhabiting a world where regular people are failed by the system and left to die.Hollowbody is an homage to the PlayStation 2-era classics that helped define the genre. It also adds a “tech-noir” spin; think the first few Silent Hill games, namely Silent Hill 2, and a touch of Blade Runner. It goes heavy on atmosphere, relying almost entirely on tension-building rather than action to create a sense of palpable unease.…
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Perennial Order is a stunning 2D Soulslike filled with plant monsters that’ll kill you in one hit
08 Sep

Perennial Order is a stunning 2D Soulslike filled with plant monsters that’ll kill you in one hit

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Indie developer Gardenfiend Games just released a gorgeous plant horror game that its team describes as “Hollow Knight meets Titan Souls.” Perennial Order, which dropped on September 6 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, is a 2D boss rush game that pulls inspiration from Dark Souls, Princess Mononoke, and the art style of Magic: The Gathering. Its protagonist is an undead knight with a pitcher plant for a head (or maybe it’s a helmet?) and a stinger grafted onto one arm, and the hostile world it’s set in is crawling with plant-infested monsters. Needless to say, I downloaded it…
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Electrolight is a short and sweet Playdate adventure game about branching out
01 Sep

Electrolight is a short and sweet Playdate adventure game about branching out

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Heart-warming little adventure games have really found a place to thrive in the Playdate. I picked up this weekend while looking for something in the same vein as the bite-sized puzzle/exploration game, Eyeland — cute, low-commitment, not particularly difficult — and found it to be utterly charming.Electrolight is described as “a tiny game about a tiny piece of light on a tiny adventure.” In it, you’re just a twinkle of light trying to find your way out of a computer so you can see the world. There are only a handful of rooms to explore, with a few simple puzzles…
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One Btn Bosses gets a ton of mileage from single-button gameplay
25 Aug

One Btn Bosses gets a ton of mileage from single-button gameplay

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One Btn Bosses does exactly what it says in the tin, but there's more to this tongue-in-cheek bullet-hell boss rush than you initially might suspect. You play as a small ship that moves along tracks and battles a string of bosses (quite literally, as you're fighting your way through the ranks of a peculiar corporation). The only real control you have at your disposal is a single button.While the visual language draws from Asteroids, it plays a bit like Vampire Survivors, in that your weapon auto fires at your enemy but your agency is even more limited as you can't…
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Echoes of the Emergent, a hauntingly beautiful Playdate exclusive, sold me on visual novels
21 Jul

Echoes of the Emergent, a hauntingly beautiful Playdate exclusive, sold me on visual novels

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Somehow in all these years, I’ve never gotten into visual novels, despite being a person who loves both reading and video games. The idea has always intrigued me in some way, but I’ve never really felt compelled to actually pick one up. That changed when I first saw the announcement for a few months ago. Described as “a personal journey through a shattered post-apocalyptic world,” all it took was a glimpse of Echoes of the Emergent’s gritty aesthetic and melancholic atmosphere to get me to preorder it. And now that I’ve finally gotten around to playing (reading? experiencing?) it, I’m…
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Angel Pop brings cutesy chaos to Playdate in a highly addictive bullet hell
07 Jul

Angel Pop brings cutesy chaos to Playdate in a highly addictive bullet hell

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This is it, the first game to nearly make me throw my Playdate against a wall. Angel Pop, a bullet hell shoot ‘em up that landed on the Playdate Catalog last month, is utter chaos. Playing as an adorable little girl, you must fend off a nonstop barrage of enemy fire over the course of 50-or-so levels, trying to clear each stage of all enemies within a limited span of time as projectiles bombard you from every direction. It moves at breakneck speed, and at some points, there may be as many as 1,000 objects on the screen. Basically, it’s…
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